professional

I have received numerous requests from UDEMY to come to their website and purchase some of their training. While this hadn’t always appealed to me (seemed like perhaps they might be trying a bit too hard), I decided I’d give it a try. While the training course I felt might be most worth my while was still selling for roughly $45, I was able to purchase this second piece of training a few weeks ago at the same time I purchased: Logo Design Fundamentals by Andrew Boehm of Growing Business Online.

Certified in How to Design Professional Infographics: Beginners Course from UDEMY

This course was much more extensive than the first, with 89 lectures encompassing software, research, slides, and an additional 4.5 hours of video content. Materials came with downloadable materials which were required for the final assessment. The downloading of materials for the final assessment seemed to be met with displeasure, although moderators noted that might change to an elected component. I was pleased with the course and could see how beginners might really sink their teeth into this.

The hope of this lecture was to create usable training. When looking into your approaches to your classes, and how you evaluate your student learning, begin by evaluating your SLO’s.

Which ones can be multiple choice questions?

Which ones can be fill-in-the-blank questions?

Which ones can require a rubric for open-ended work?

It is important to note that there is a distinct difference between assessment and evaluation.Evaluation— placing a valueAssessment— Sitting beside the learner and making a determination

More assessments means less stress and better evaluations. Use follow-up questions to accurately assess student learning after lecture and readings. Discussions are great ways to provide students with asynchronus communication when assessing their learning.

If you are giving a grade for everything, students will become grade-oriented. That is, if the task is deemed to be worth doing, and the reward is deemed high enough.

Your students will want to know “How am I graded?”, “What kind of assessments will I receive?”. Be crystal clear. Evaluation is measurement. It should be valid (that is to say, it should test what you want it to test), and it should also be reliable (that is to say, it should be usable again and again without fail).

What are the Threats to Validity?

Threats to validity are often no mentioned. Specifically, cheating. What is it that you are measuring… if the students cheat. Its really a good question. Testing improves learning. Studies and testing clearly supports this.

We took a short test, a tauroscatalogical test.

Incorrect answers will stay with students if not corrected. They can stay with people for a lifetime if uncorrected. The best answer or solution to this is to discuss incorrect answers with students and why the proper answers are correct. Students in high school typically complete 200+ multiple choice test by the time they graduate. Typically, this encompasses 1 right answer, 1 wrong answer in an opposite fashion, and 2 items which are deemed “distractors”. Your students are GOOD at taking these test. You are very poor at writing them.

Case problems are typically the worst questions of all times. Teachers like them because they are ways of dealing with real-world problems. Students hate these, because they are difficult, and moreso than any other type of question they encounter. Dial back the number of these questions that you demand students answer. These are the “Money questions”.

Time to go

At this point, the discussions began to diverge from my needs. As a graphic and web design teacher, our examinations are based on real-world scenarios, multiple choice questions, and the best I can come up with in a constantly changing landscape of culture and technology. Frankly, if I can come up with 50-60 questions, I feel totally on top of my game.

The discussion broke down into item analysis, how to properly calculate the discrimination index with your questions using results from a scan-tron machine, and the mathematical calculations required to do this. I don’t use scan-tron forms, and I haven’t used one since I started working in education in 2005. All of my testing is blackboard-based and I couldn’t help with this or even pretend to understand how these mathematics could be carried out. The populations they discussed in the classes were in the 200+ range per section, and my largest class is 24 students per section, or up to 96 students per semester in all my courses.

We then broke down into small groups and discussed our individual SLOs and which could be broken down into what kinds of questions. Since in my courses we are generally discussing 4 SLOs, my portion was over quickly enough to focus on others for the remainder of the class. I felt this class was enjoyable, and I learned a great deal, however I could not participate as fully as others.

Ed Neal is a consultant with 34 years of experience in faculty development.

Project Management (2013) Certification Achieved!

Since the end of the semester is here, but the summer semester hasn’t begun, I’ve decided that the time is right for me to cover some certification bases. Project Management is a skill that one can never seem to get enough training in. My PMP (Project Management Professional)training was some time ago, and the last project management update I received was related to the changes made in 2008 related to the PMP testing changes.

With this empty time, I’m currently working on a grant with one of my co-workers (gamification of collegiate courses by Tyler Dockery, MAEd and Nicolas D’Agata, MSEd). Before the time for the summer semester is heavy upon me, I took today to get some of those updates to the PMP knowledge base under my skin so that I can be better prepared for the future.

Glad to know that all of my studying paid off, perhaps I wont need another upgrade for a few years now.

Project Management (2008) Certification Achieved!

Winter is here and I’ve decided that the time is right for me to cover some Project Management content. My PMP (Project Management Professional) training was some time ago, and It’s time to update the information I received related to the changes made in 2008 to the PMP testing changes.

Glad to know that all of my studying paid off, perhaps I wont need another upgrade for a few years now.